sentences of this kind or that, especially interesting properties that create logical puzzles, and then asked, how can we put together a theory of such sentences that explains why the sentences exhibit those puzzling semantic features? His answer, as in the Theory of Descriptions, would be a putative truth condition. Truth-Condition Theories: Davidson's program 115 The Truth-Condition Theory sees meaning as representation. In effect it reverts to the Referential Theory's idea of meaning as mirroring or corre- spondence between sentences and actual or possible states of affairs; Russell emphasized this idea (and indeed made it a cornerstone of his metaphysics). The truth definition is founded on the referential relations between terms and their worldly denotata or extensions. We saw in chapter 1 that the crude Referential Theory was far too simple an idea of the correspondence between
of the Kirbys. But this extreme position is unnatural and inherently unstable. Under continued challenge from the Kirbys, Topper experiments tentatively with the free, loose behavior of his polar opposites, then retreats to comfortable rigidity, repeating the process several times until reaching a tipping point where he can no longer resist, and gives himself over completely to their madcap strategy for living, totally reversing his polarity. In the end, he reverts to something like his old, meek behavior, but now has access to his freer side and is happier for it. Sometimes, however, the reversal of polarity happens early in the story and all at once, in a catastrophic collapse of the effort to maintain an extreme, polarized position. In Fargo, W i l l i a m M a c y s character topples a lifetime of following the rules 325
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